1960s photos reveal Derry Travellers’ ‘degrading living conditions’

One of the photos from the ‘Abandonment’ exhibition.

The selection of photographs will be exhibited at Eden Place Arts Centre, Pilots Row, from Monday, February 10 until February 28.

Entitled “Abandonment”, the exhibition features the work of Eamon Melaugh, a veteran of Derry’s civil rights movement of the 1960s.

He says: “My photographs show in graphic detail the degrading living conditions in which fellow human beings survived in.

“I became aware that a Traveller couple were to be married at St. Patrick’s Church in Pennyburn, I decided, uninvited, to photograph the wedding. However, on the day in question, the wedding was cancelled. So, several days later, I presented myself at the campsite in Ballyarnet where the Traveller community lived and I was truly appalled that human beings were living in abject squalor.”

The exhibition can be viewed anytime from 10am-6pm, Monday-Friday.